


A Little Night Magic

by orphan_account



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-24 17:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15635430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: An Alternate Universe re-telling of the episodes Black Buddha 1 & 2, mostly from Vachon and Tracy's POV.What if Vachon was Nick's new partner, and Tracy was the vampire?Takes place in the time frame of the series (mid-90s).Oh, and Schanke's not dead, because that just sucked.





	1. Somewhere in the Night

As often happened, the evening news was Nick Knight's alarm clock. The story about a prisoner named Dollard, who was being transferred to Alberta that night, rang those little bells in his subconscious that began to kick-start his brain into an awakened state.

Dollard was being sent to Alberta because Nick and his partner Don Schanke had captured him and procured evidence linking him to a courthouse bombing in Edmonton.

The collar had earned Schanke a promotion to Captain of the 96th, where he had replaced Amanda Cohen who had transferred to a more prestigious position with the RCMP. It meant a big step up the ladder for Schanke, but it also meant the end of their partnership. Nick would be lying if he said he didn't have mixed feelings about it. He was happy for his partner, but damn it, he was going to miss working with him, too.

The ringing phone jarred him fully awake. It was Schanke, worried about what he was going to wear when he faced the horde of reporters that would no doubt be at the airport where he intended to personally see Dollard and his uniformed escort onto the plane.

His amusement at Schanke's uncertainty with regard to fashion sense was short-lived, fading the moment he opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of his evening meal. It was blood, just like it had been for the past 767 years, despite four years of concerted effort on the part of one Dr. Natalie Lambert to change that fact.

What the hell was he kidding himself for? He'd never be human again. No matter how strongly Natalie believed in that possibility--and in him- \- he became more certain of that as time passed with no real change in his 'condition.'

He stopped by the morgue to see Natalie on his way in, and she gave him the usual pep talk: "It will take time." "You have to work at." "I'm not giving up on you." It was that last one that always did it. Whether he deserved her faith in him or not was a moot point--it gave him faith in himself and motivated him to go on with the quest for a cure when nothing else did.

His mood had almost lifted by the time he got to the precinct, and was called into the captain's office. Seeing Don Schanke behind that desk was going to take some getting used to.

The news was not good.

"This is a deal for me, okay partner?" Funny how he was still calling him 'partner'--old habits would take time to die. "I don't want to blow it for myself on Day One."

"But why me?" Nick groaned.

"Because you collared the bomber. Because last week you were all over the 5 o'clock news. Because I want to keep his little ass safe on my watch. Besides, you're without a partner now. You're the logical choice."

Nick would not be placated. "His father is on the police commission."

"Which I wasn't going to bring up, but since _you_ did, yes, he is. And if I want to keep this job, I'm gonna need his support, so I am assigning his little boy to you, pal, and you are going to make sure he stays in one piece."

Nick grunted in disgust.

Schanke continued, "Hey, if he wasn't any good, he'd still be in blues. Kid must have a head on his shoulders, right?"

Schanke led Nick into the hallway to introduce him to his new partner, only to find him fast asleep on a bench in the waiting area. Nick almost walked right past him. The leather jacket, tousled shoulder-length black hair and 3 days worth of stubble did nothing to indicate that he was a cop, and not some vagrant dragged in out of the cold to sleep it off.

Schanke cleared his throat. "Detective Vachon!"

Dark eyelashes lifted almost imperceptibly. "Huh? . . . Oh . . . " The young man sat up straight and blinked at Schanke then at Nick. "Guess I fell asleep."

Nick eyed him with a sour expression and Schanke felt the need to explain, "Detective Vachon was in vice before he came here. More relaxed dress code."

"I see that," Nick muttered, realizing that Schanke had no intention of enforcing homicide's more rigid standards on the scruffy young detective.

"JD Vachon," the young man said, extending a hand. Nick shook it reluctantly. His handshake was firm, that was a plus. There had to be at least one or two more things he could find to tolerate about his new partner.

They had no immediate calls, so after giving Vachon a quick tour of the precinct, he decided to head in the general direction of the airport, and maybe meet up with Schanke to see how he was faring after his first moment in the media spotlight as a precinct Captain.

He and Vachon had not had much to say to each other, but when they arrived in the parking lot, Vachon's dark eyes widened in admiration when he saw the Caddy.

" _Nice_ wheels," he commented, gently caressing one of the fins. Okay, that made two things Nick could tolerate.

Once inside the vehicle, Vachon quizzed him in unrelenting detail about the car, not only because he was truly interested, but because he was apparently trying to be friendly. Nick was still annoyed at being saddled with him, though, and was less than cordial.

Vachon eventually sensed this.

"Look, I know what you're thinking. . . . " he began.

"I wasn't thinking," Nick interrupted.

"Yes, you were. Everyone thinks it. The Academy. The streets. It's like I have a neon sign over my head: 'Commissioner's Son: Asshole.'"

Nick probably should have denied that, but he didn't. It didn't matter, because Vachon's mind had temporarily drifted off the subject by then. "Do they actually reimburse you for the gas mileage in this thing?"

Nick laughed softly. "Yeah, but I won't tell anyone it gets 7 miles to the gallon if you don't. . . . Although coming from you it might make a difference."

Vachon glared at him. "I'm my own man, Knight. Who my father is . . . "

"Has nothing to do with where you are in your career," Nick finished sarcastically.

Vachon looked away and sighed. "No. I can't say that. We both know it's a lie. I'm only asking that you . . . "

"Judge you on your own merit?"

"Yeah."

"No problem," Nick said, even though it was, in fact, a problem.

"Where are we going, anyway?" the young detective asked, apparently just realizing they were driving without a particular destination.

"Nowhere special," Nick shrugged. "I just thought we'd drive around."

"And keep me out of harm's way?" Vachon scoffed.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. . . . We're almost to the airport."

Nick nodded. "I thought I'd see how Schank . . . the Captain . . . made out with the microphones and flashbulbs."

"So why aren't you there? You made the collar."

"Schanke made it, too."

"And he got the promotion."

Nick studied Vachon's expression and decided that last remark was a statement of fact, and not an intentional barb.

"He earned it," Nick shrugged. "He has seniority, anyway."

Again, Vachon's mind changed gears. "I heard you were allergic to sunlight. Phototropic or something."

"The word is 'photophobic'," Nick corrected him, "and yes, I am."

"So, why the convertible?"

Nick delayed answering because he knew his mortal partner would never hear him above the engines of the departing plane that was now almost directly over their heads.

Vachon gazed upwards at the aircraft at the exact instant that a blinding flash of light ripped across the sky. As the roar of a thunderous explosion reached them, the sky filled with flaming debris, plummeting to earth from the spot where the plane had been an instant before.

"OH SHIT!" Vachon exclaimed in horror.

"Call it in!" Nick barked.

Vachon continued to stare at the empty sky. "Oh, shit. . . . " he repeated.

"Vachon, CALL IT IN!"

Nick activated the dashboard flasher and siren and both he and Vachon were pushed against the seat backs as he slammed the accelerator to the floor, headed in the direction where he thought the largest piece of the aircraft had fallen.


	2. For Whom the Bell Tolls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vachon sees Tracy for the first time.
> 
> WARNING: Graphic depiction of plane crash aftermath.

They were the first to arrive at the scene. The wreckage had miraculously missed a populated area and most appeared to have fallen into an empty field where it lay in scattered, twisted pieces, some of them still burning.

The detectives stood staring numbly at the scene for several seconds, neither of them able to decide what to do next, or where to start doing it. To Nick, every aspect of the holocaust was readily apparent--his hyper-acute vampire senses detected the scent of cooking blood rising above the odor of spilled jet fuel, the minutest fragments of the human flesh that was literally splattered across the landscape. After almost 800 years of witnessing nearly every type of carnage imaginable, the sight still stunned and sickened him. He was thankful that his young partner's mortal senses were oblivious to much of it. What Vachon _could_ see would be bad enough.

"Is everyone . . . " Vachon began, and then realized what a foolish question he was about to ask.

But even as Nick was about to tell him no one could have survived the crash, his sensitive hearing detected the sound of a crying infant that unmistakably came from somewhere in the wreckage.

Without wasting precious time to explain, Nick rushed forward towards the sound.

Vachon hesitated only a moment before following him.

Nick tried to step gingerly around the body parts, knowing that he could see them and Vachon could not. He hoped the young detective would stay in his footsteps and not have to endure the horror of tripping over a severed limb or slipping on someone's entrails.

As they neared a heap of twisted metal, Vachon also picked up the baby's cries, and sped up to keep pace with Nick.

Nick began to grab the tangled chunks of debris and fling them aside. Vachon attempted to do the same, grabbing a slab of fuselage similar in size to one he had just seen Nick toss aside like a newspaper.

He could barely budge it, and he looked up at Nick with a puzzled expression.

But Nick didn't have time for explanations and excuses. He tugged the piece of metal from Vachon's hands and hurled it ten feet. The infant buried in the wreckage was possibly seriously injured, and rescue was his first priority. He'd deal with Vachon's questions later.

Nick sensed that the infant, though dirty and frightened, was, amazingly, unhurt. He reached down and lifted the crying bundle into his arms. It screamed even louder, no doubt because, with that peculiar sense that infants and small children often had, the baby realized it was in the arms of something not quite human.

Nick shoved the child at Vachon, who held it at arms' length, unsure of what, exactly, to do with it. Although the terror it had experienced in Nick's hands abruptly subsided, the child continued to cry.

"It helps if you hold them close to you," Nick pointed out.

Uncertainly, Vachon rested the baby against his shoulder and gently patted its back. It continued to cry, but not in a way that indicated it was in any real distress.

Nick spotted a piece of paper on the ground that looked like the remains of a boarding pass. He picked it up and was able to ascertain the flight number. It was the flight Dollard had been booked on, which meant the two officers escorting him were among the charred remains.

He ordered Vachon to stay where he was until help arrived and set about looking for others who might still be alive, but the rescue teams arrived before he got very far.

Even so, by that time he suspected the worst, that only the tiny baby in his partner's arms had escaped the disaster.

Schanke arrived on the heels of the rescue personnel. He approached Nick and Vachon at the ambulance as the tiny lone survivor was being examined before being taken to the hospital for observation.

Schanke's face was uncharacteristically grim as he surveyed the scene, and Nick knew he had already been informed that two of his men had been on the plane.

"I have to tell their families," he said to Nick, as if it were just dawning on him that his new job came with some unpleasant strings attached.

Nick nodded. "What do you say about something like this?"

Schanke shrugged forlornly. "That the plane went down."

Nick saw Vachon look up at the Captain in surprise. Did Schanke not know? "There was an explosion," Nick said. "We saw it. We saw an explosion in the air."

Schanke nodded absently, as if still trying to assimilate the scene before him. "It could have been a lot of things. They're not sure. We can't assume a connection to the bomber. Not yet . . . What do I say to their wives? Their kids? That could have been _us_ on that plane, Nick."

Nick nodded. Perhaps he wasn't doing Schanke any favors by postponing a sad duty he would have to perform eventually, but Schanke was right. Dollard was their collar. Where it not for their rank, it would have been them escorting him to Alberta and people would be sifting through the wreckage for their body parts. He put a hand on Schanke's shoulders. "I'll take care of it, Schank."

Schanke displayed no outward emotion, but his small, dark eyes filled with gratitude.

Nick was about to leave when Natalie drove up. He hurried to her, and touched her gently on the arm in a silent gesture of empathy. She was a strong woman, and as a forensic pathologist she was accustomed to grisly scenes. But he knew that the next few hours were going to be especially gruesome and trying, even for her.

Vachon had followed, but as Nick stepped away from Natalie to go to his car, Schanke pulled the young detective aside. "You can ride with me."

Whatever Schanke's reasons were for not wanting him to accompany his partner, Vachon had the discretion not to question them. He followed Schanke as the captain set out on foot to survey the crash site.

"You think both her parents are out here somewhere?" Vachon asked.

"Who's that?"

"The baby. You think she lost them both?"

Schanke sighed. "I suppose we'll know soon enough."

To Vachon, it seemed like the Captain was looking at his surroundings but not actually seeing them. He couldn't blame him. He didn't really want to be looking at any of this himself. He hadn't had a lot of experience dealing with death, and he certainly had not been prepared to deal with it on such a massive scale. A dead body was one thing--people in pieces was something else, entirely.

He felt sick to his stomach and was actually trying to avoid seeing _anything_ when a flash of something faintly recognizable caught his eye. He looked more closely and discovered that what he had seen was the floodlights set up by the rescue team reflecting off of a shock of platinum blonde hair.

There was no flag to indicate that remains had been located there, so he moved in for a closer look, saying a silent prayer that he would find something more than a severed head.

His heart sank when he saw her.

Even in death, she was lovely. Were it not for the nasty gashes on her forehead and cheek, her skin would have been perfect. She was tall, and elegantly slender, with strong Nordic features and hair that glowed like gold even in the dim light. What a waste that her life should have ended like this. . . .

She blinked.

He blinked, too, not knowing whether to believe what he knew he had just seen and finally deciding that he had to.

"Captain Schanke!" he shouted. "She's alive!"

Schanke hurried to his side and knelt beside the young woman. He placed his fingers on the pulse point on her neck for several seconds, but then shook his head sadly.

"She's stone cold, Vachon. There's no pulse."

Schanke gently pulled the lids down over her open eyes--eyes Vachon _knew_ had been closed just seconds before.

"But I saw her eyes move," Vachon insisted.

Schanke stood up and placed his hands paternally on Vachon's shoulders.

"Look, kid, I think you've seen enough for tonight. We all have."

"But . . . "

"Let's go."

Vachon reluctantly followed, but couldn't resist the temptation to look back over his shoulder. Of course he had been seeing things, or maybe it was a residual reflex action. Schanke had seen enough corpses to know when someone was dead, hadn't he?

< _What was that?. . ._ >

 Vachon was certain he'd seen a flash of movement, a blur of black and that pale blond hair. He stopped in his tracks and turned to look more closely at the spot he had just left. A piece of wreckage obscured the blond woman's body so he couldn't tell if it was still there or not.

< _Of course it's still there. . ._. >

He watched for several seconds more, but nothing else moved.

Captain Schanke was right. It was time to go. . . .


	3. Take Me Home Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tracy makes her presence known.
> 
> WARNING: Graphic depiction of plane crash aftermath.

"Was it a bomb? Yes or no?" Nick questioned Schanke directly.

"Maybe. But the crash site is closed to us. It's RCMP, TSB, CSIS, TCCA, ATF-OIA -- It's alphabet soup and no one is saying a damn thing," Schanke grunted.

"If it was a bomb . . . "

"Then someone wanted Dollard to keep his mouth shut."

"Like an accomplice."

"Let it go, Nick. We're already getting reamed for moving him on public transportation, but it doesn't change a damn thing; we're out of the loop on this one. We get nothing, nyetski, nada."

Schanke looked down at the framed pictures on his desk, photos of the slain officers that would go in the precinct's memorial display case. "We're too close to this one, Nick. . . . " he said softly.

Nick nodded. "Yeah, I know. Did Vachon come in yet?"

Schanke shook his head. "I gave him a couple of days. He was losing it at the crash site last night."

"Losing it?" That didn't sound good.

"Oh, I don't mean he was ready for the canvas tuxedo, but he thought he was seeing live people where there weren't any."

Nick nodded. He was so accustomed to seeing death in all its forms that it was hard to imagine what it might be like for someone who wasn't as hardened as he and Schanke were.

Besides, not having the green detective tagging along would give him a chance to work on his own. His first stop would be the makeshift morgue where what was left of the passengers had been taken. Natalie would be there. Even though Metro PD had been cut off, the services of the Coroner's office would be needed until all of the bodies had been identified and claimed.

As it turned out, however, he entered the building directly behind Vachon. The young detective didn't notice him, but Nick watched as he casually approached the Mountie who guarded access to the building.

"I'm sorry sir, but it's a closed area," the Mountie explained.

Vachon pulled something from his leather jacket and flashed it at the Mountie, who nodded and let him pass.

Nick was stopped with the same line the Mountie had used on Vachon.

He produced his ID. "Metro PD."

"Closed to Metro, sorry."

Nick indicated the direction in which Vachon had disappeared. "How did he get in?"

"He's with the police commission."

Nick muttered an oath, and then caught the Mountie's eyes with a pre-hypnotic gaze. He was not above using the whammy if it served his purposes. Even Natalie agreed it came in handy.

"So am I," he intoned in a tempo that complimented the Mountie's heartbeat.

"I knew that, sir," the Mountie said without hesitation. "Go right ahead."

He caught up with Vachon easily enough.

"Is this JD-never-uses-his-father's-influence-Vachon?" he asked.

Vachon turned around. "I . . . uh . . . just wanted to see if they'd found that baby's family. How did you get in?"

"A few well-chosen words."

Vachon didn't look like he was going to question that, but in any event he never got the chance. Natalie, having heard Nick's voice, appeared in the hallway where they were standing.

"This is not the best place for either of you," she said, giving Nick a meaningful glance that ended with a nod in Vachon's direction.

Nick was at her side in an instant. He gave her a quick, but affectionate hug. "Do they know yet?" he asked. "Was it a bomb?"

She closed her eyes, no doubt re-experiencing the horror of trying to identify bodies from pieces too small to be more than bits of meat. "It was a bomb," she said.

Vachon had noticed that the wall of the hallway was covered with photos and descriptions of the passengers who had been positively identified and matched with numbers that had been assigned to recovered remains. On the opposite wall were three more cards containing passenger information, but no ID numbers.

"What's with these?" Vachon asked.

Natalie joined him, motioning towards the incomplete cards. "Those are the ones we can't find. The two men were seated over the wing, probably incinerated." She indicated the third card. "Theresa Vaughn . . . we don't know much about her other than she was in her twenties, she was on the plane, and we haven't found her body. Yet."

A second Mountie approached the three of them. "We're securing the building for the night, Doctor Lambert." He looked suspiciously at Nick and Vachon.

"We're the last ones out," Natalie assured him.

Nick took her hand and they started for the exit. Vachon was following a few steps behind when he was sure he saw a shadow moving across the wall that did not belong to any of the three of them or to the Mountie. After his embarrassing experience with Captain Schanke the night before, however, he didn't want to say anything until he was sure.

Nick turned and called to him, "Coming, Vachon?"

Vachon patted his leather jacket, he hoped convincingly. "I must have set my keys down somewhere. . . . I'll be right out. . . . "

As soon as the couple was out of sight, Vachon drew his gun. He had no idea who the intruder was and could not imagine what kind of psycho would want to be locked in a dark building full of body parts.

He slipped into the morgue itself. Thankfully, the body parts had been tagged and bagged, so the scent of disinfectant managed to mask most of the smell of decay and blood. He squinted, adjusting his eyes to the dim light and trying to block out the thought of what the mounds of black plastic that dotted the floor of the room really were.

He treaded lightly, his nerves on edge not only because of the eerie surroundings. Since seeing the awful things he'd seen at the crash site the night before, his stomach had been one huge knot, and he hadn't slept in over 24 hours. It had been about 12 hours longer than that since he'd felt like he could eat anything. No matter what his mind wanted to do, his body was in no condition to take on any more stress.

He heard a rustling noise that made his heart skip a beat or two in the instant it took for him to locate the direction it came from. He followed the sound and then he saw it. . . .

Someone was squatting near one of the bags, actually rifling through whatever was inside! What kind of total sicko . . .

Well, it didn't really matter what kind. He was going to arrest his ass.

He raised his weapon. "Freeze! Metro police."

He was taken completely by surprise when the voice that answered him was female. "You guys. You really say that, don't you? 'Freeze.' As if!" She continued as though he wasn't there.

Okay, so she was a girl. He would arrest _her_ ass. "Slowly turn around with your hands where I can see them," he ordered.

She hesitated a second or two, but then slowly stood up. She was easily as tall as he was, but very definitely a girl. As she became fully upright, the moonlight shining through a window caught her hair, pale as the moon itself. His mind turned flip-flops as he realized this was the same girl he'd seen lying in the wreckage. The one Schanke had told him was dead.

Her lovely face was smeared with grime and dried blood, but the ugly gashes he thought he had seen the night before were gone. Her clothing was in tatters, but even worse than that, she was holding a severed hand as she grinned at him.

"I'm afraid that's impossible," she said cheerfully. "I lost one in the crash."

She emphasized this statement by raising both arms in the air. One still had a hand attached to it, and that hand was holding the severed hand. The other arm ended in a bloody stump.

She continued to smile at him.

He knew he was staring at her like an idiot, but he couldn't move. His insides had turned to mush and a cold, tingly feeling was quickly spreading through his body. He'd fainted once--the first time he'd watched an autopsy. He knew what that felt like, and damn it, he was _not_ going to do it again.

She kept smiling at him, that mangled hand dangling near her pretty face, shreds of tissue and bone hanging from the stump. Maybe she was saying something to him, but he really couldn't tell. The pounding cadence of his own blood pulsing through his head would have drowned out her words.

Despite the darkness everything started looking very bright. Too bright. His vision was whiting out. . . . He squeezed his eyes shut for just a moment, trying to clear it. Nope, he was _not_ going to faint. . . .

His gun shook in his hands and he tried to maintain a grip on it even though he really could no longer see it. His visual field had narrowed until all he could see was her smile-- and that hand and that stump--and those images were rapidly fading. . . .

He bit down hard on his lip, hoping the pain would restore his senses, and regretted that he hadn't at least had a Coke or something to raise his blood sugar . . . . He absolutely could _not_ faint in front of this girl. There was no way . . .

\+ + + + +

He woke up slumped in the seat of his red Triumph, tearing down the street at blurring speed.

Dazed and startled, he groped madly for something--anything--to grab onto and realized that his legs were draped over the handlebars instead of straddling the bike. Not only was that position totally ridiculous, it made it impossible for him to do anything but sit exactly as he was. Suddenly shifting the position of his legs would upset the balance of the motorcycle, not that he could have moved, anyway. He looked down and saw an arm restraining him, so tightly that he was virtually trapped..

What the hell . . .

He panicked momentarily when he realized he had no control over the bike, but it slowed by itself as the light at the upcoming intersection turned red.

As soon as it rolled to a stop, the arm holding him eased its grip and he seized the opportunity to jump off.

He turned and saw the girl from the morgue sitting on his bike like she owned it.

Her hands were on the handlebars now. Both of them. The bloody stump he thought he'd seen . . . _knew_ he had seen . . . .

"Your hand . . . " he muttered.

"You're awake."

The light from a nearby street lamp verified that the deep gashes that he also _knew_ he had seen were gone.

"Your face . . . "

She moved one hand to fluff out her bedraggled hair. "Can you begin a sentence with another word?"

He noticed his gun was tucked into the waistband of what was left of her jeans.

"My gun!"

"Good boy," she grinned and handed the weapon back to him.

"You stole my bike."

She raked her fingers though her windblown locks. He was the one wearing the helmet. "Believe me, it was not my first choice for transportation." She tugged at an especially unruly strand. "I am _never_ going to get these tangles out!"

Vachon frowned as a thought occurred to him. "How did I get here?"

"I carried you to this baby and put you on it." She patted the seat of the Triumph. "After you fainted."

There was no way he believed that. If she weighed 125 pounds it would have surprised him.

"I didn't faint," he felt the need to point out. If he'd eaten, it wouldn't have happened. That severed hand had nothing to do with it.

"Okay, after you decided to fall asleep with your gun on me," she giggled.

Somehow, he was going to have to salvage his dignity.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

She was still smiling. God, she was beautiful, and she hadn't _really_ stolen his bike, since it was right there in front of him.

"Tracy Vetter . . . . and you're Javier Vachon, Metro Police. . . . " Her nose wrinkled in an impish grin. "Checked your ID."

She'd gotten his name right, pronouncing the "J" like an "H" and not trying to make the "ier" sound French. His grandmother was the only one who ever called him 'Javier,' but it sounded so nice when she said it that he didn't tell her he was 'JD' to everyone else.

She held her hand out for him to shake it, the hand that hadn't been there before and now was. He saw what appeared to be a ring of scar tissue around the wrist, but other than that it looked like a normal hand.

Still, there was no way he was going to touch it.

Instead, he shoved his gun back into its holster and hopped back on the bike so he was sitting in front of her. He removed her hands from the controls.

"Good, then you know why we're going downtown."

"We _are_ downtown," she pointed out.

"I'm talking about the station."

He didn't feel her move, but in the next instant she was off the bike and standing in front of him, staring at him with the loveliest blue eyes he had ever seen.

"We don't want to do that, Javier," she said in a way that made it hard for him to tell what she was thinking. She stared at him, not blinking or even moving her eyes, and he felt as though his own eyes were being compelled to stare back.

"We don't?" he muttered.

In a voice that was almost a monotone, she told him, "You're going to take me to the nearest mall so I can find something decent to wear. . . . "

For a brief instant, he was ready to agree with her, ready to take her anywhere, so that she could get everything and anything she wanted. Luckily, that quickly passed.

"The malls are closed," he said.

She sighed in exasperation, and continued in that same monotone, her eyes still fixed on him, "That does not matter. We're going to one anyway. Then we are going to your place so I can clean up. And after that, we'll say bye-bye and you are going to forget you ever saw me."

He stared straight into those incredible blue eyes, blinked, and said, "No way."

She cocked her head to one side, and a confused look crossed her face for a moment. But then she said, "Well, what if I tell you something about the crash?"

He considered this, but emphasized, "We still aren't going to break into a mall."

She folded her arms across her stomach and rolled her eyes impatiently. "I cannot run around looking like _this_!" She let her arms drop to her sides, palms out, and added, "Just look at me!"

He was happy to do that. He let his eyes travel the length of her body, with its gentle curves and those long, wonderful legs. "I think I have stuff that will fit. You can borrow something."

That suggestion just plain annoyed her, but she wasn't going to get a better offer and she knew it. She hopped back on the bike behind him and encircled his waist with her arms. That would have been fine except it reminded him that she'd had one hand and now she had two.

He decided the hand thing must have been a trick. A _good_ trick, but a trick.

The no-pulse-when-Captain-Schanke-checked thing was harder to explain, but it could have been another trick. Some people could slow their hearts or stop them. Or, more likely, the Captain had just made a mistake.

But why had she left the scene?

Maybe she didn't want the publicity of being a survivor. . . .

Yeah. That was it . . . .


	4. You Can't Always Get What You Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who - or what - is Tracy?

Vachon efficiently maintained two laundry baskets, one for stuff that was dirty and one for stuff that was clean. It saved him the trouble of actually folding laundry.

He dug through the 'clean' basket until he came up with a towel. Normally, he didn't see a lot of point in washing towels. You only dried yourself with them after you had washed yourself, and they dried by themselves if you remembered to hang them somewhere. But a couple of weeks before, he'd sliced his thumb open working on his bike, and he'd used this towel to stop the bleeding, so he'd had to wash it. It still had a stain on it, but there was nothing he could do about that.

He found a pair of jeans that weren't too crumpled because they were close to the top, but the only shirts in the basket were wadded into tight wrinkly balls because he had taken them out of the dryer before they were actually dry. Watching clothes spin around at the laundramat had never been his idea of an exciting time.

Maybe he had something hanging in his closet.

Tracy had closed the bathroom door, but not locked it. He folded the clean towel neatly and tiptoed in to place it on the sink where she would find it, all the while cursing himself for buying an opaque shower curtain.

He then went to the closet where he discovered exactly two shirts on hangers, both in that intermediate stage where they were not exactly clean, but in an emergency could be worn one or two more times before being laundered.

He rummaged through his dresser drawers, tunneling through socks and underwear and finally struck gold. Under a pile of sweats was a purplish-pinkish long-sleeved tee-shirt that his ex- girlfriend had given him for Christmas. He had hated it, even before she dumped him, and it was still in the package.

He ripped off the plastic and gave the shirt a good shaking to air it out. He did the same with the jeans, hoping to make them look less wrinkled.

He laid them out on the bed, and then realized that the bed had been made. He had no bedspread, but the pillows had been fluffed and placed neatly at the head of the bed, and the edge of the top sheet had been folded over the edge of the blanket. At the foot of the bed, both the sheet and blanket had been tucked under the mattress with neat, precise hospital corners.

Was she trying to send him a message?

He looked back at the dresser and thought it might be a good idea to stuff his shorts back into the drawers. While he was doing that, he got a good look at himself in the mirror.

He dragged his fingers across a stubbly cheek. Maybe he should shave . . .

But his razor was in the bathroom. Somewhere.

"Spend a lot of time staring at yourself in the mirror?"

He jumped at the sound of her voice. He hadn't heard her come out of the bathroom.

He took a second to compose himself and then turned to face her. She already had the shirt on and had wrapped her hair in the towel. How long had she been standing there?

The shirt was long enough to serve the cause of modesty, but it wasn't too outrageously big on her. He could still see the outline of her small firm breasts and the curve of her hips through the fabric. He tried to concentrate on that instead of her bare legs and the fact that she probably wasn't wearing any panties.

Her skin was almost actually white--well beyond what he would have called 'fair'--but for some reason she didn't look pasty or sickly in any way.

She rolled the rib-knit cuffs up half a turn.

"Nice color," she said, admiring the fit in the mirror.

He could still see marks on her wrist and face, and he pointed to them casually.

"I should take you to a hospital. Get someone to look at those."

She tugged her wet bangs out from under the towel as if trying to conceal the scar on her forehead. "Actually, everything's healing up quite nicely. . . . toss me those jeans."

He handed her the jeans and she slid them on. They fit easily over her narrow, shapely ass, and while she would have looked stunning if they had fit a bit tighter, they looked fine on her.

She pulled the towel from her head and then stood staring at the rust-colored blood stain on it.

"It's clean," he said quickly. "That's just a stain."

She held the spot to her nose and inhaled, which was pretty damned weird in and of itself, but then she closed her eyes and smiled as if she could actually smell something and said "Chocolate."

"Uh, no . . . it's blood. I cut my finger." He held his thumb up to show her, even though the injury had completely healed and only a fading scar remained.

She smiled at him oddly--like she knew something he didn't--and handed him the towel, which he tossed aside. She returned to her image in the mirror and tugged on her bangs some more.

"Do you have a hairbrush?" she asked.

He did have one. Somewhere. "Uh . . . yeah . . . "

Once again he began to excavate his dresser drawers, but after all but dumping their contents onto the floor, he was forced to look elsewhere for the brush. He finally found it underneath the dresser. He nonchalantly tugged the dark hairs and dust bunnies off of it before handing it to her.

He tired not to stare too intently as she separated the silken strands of her baby-fine hair. Even with her head soaking wet, she was beautiful.

So beautiful, he almost forgot that there was business to be taken care of.

"You were in the crash," he told her what he knew was true. "I saw you getting away last night. Three people are unaccounted for. Two men, seated over the wing, and a 25-year-old Toronto woman, no known means of support."

He realized how a woman might construe that last line as an insult when she stopped brushing and glared at him.

"Do I look like a hooker to you?"

"Uh . . . no . . . I just meant . . . uh . . . " Okay, he'd already put his foot in it, might as well jump all the way in. "What you are, I have no idea. But I'll bet you're a dead ringer for Theresa Vaughn."

She turned her face back to he mirror. "Good choice of words, Javier, but 'Teri' died in that crash."

He had a hunch, so he played it. "You're running from something."

She put down the brush and turned to him. "You can't help," she said softly.

"I'm a cop. . . . "

"My point exactly." She reached out her hand--the unscarred one--and ran her fingertips down his cheek, then twisted a lock of his hair loosely around her index finger. "You're not bad, Javier Vachon. . . . "

Was she coming on to him?? He didn't know what to say. He'd never expected to get that incredibly lucky with someone who looked as exquisite as she did. . . .

He tried to keep his mind on business. Whoever she was, he believed she had important information that might reveal what had killed all those people on that plane.

"You were going to tell me something about the crash."

Her eyes darted to the window, as if she expected to see something there.. "No time. I have to go." Her fingers moved to his neck and then traced a path lightly down to his chest. Her hands were so cold he could feel them through his shirt.

"This isn't making sense. . . . " he muttered, and he meant that in more ways than one.

"It doesn't have to," she said.

That didn't make sense, either. "How will I find you?"

She shook her head slightly. "It's too dangerous. Don't try. I'll come to you, okay?"

She stepped towards him and leaned forward, then kissed him lightly on the lips, pressing her cool, soft cheek against his. She'd used the very same soap that he showered with, but somehow, it smelled so much better on her.

He felt her breath on his neck and found the sensation incredibly erotic. Casually wrapping his arms around her, he drew her close, wondering what would happen if she stood close enough, long enough, to notice that she was arousing him.

He was just going to close his eyes, relax and enjoy whatever came next, but the dresser mirror behind her was reflecting the mirror over the bathroom sink, which in turn was reflecting her face, and for just an instant, he thought he saw her eyes _glowing_.

He stepped away from her, trying not to make the movement too obvious. Who the hell was she?? < _What_ was she? >

But when he looked directly at her again, he felt thoroughly stupid. Her eyes looked completely normal.

She gave his cheek one last, soft stroke and said, "Thanks for the shower."

She slipped on her battered shoes--there was no way anything he had would fit, but at least she still had them both--and hurried to the door. She had it half-way open when she turned back, nodded towards the bathroom, and said, "By the way, they do make products that get rid of mildew . . . before it takes over your entire apartment."


	5. Danger Zone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vachon goes looking for Tracy - and doesn't expect what he finds.

Nick had played the cockpit voice recording from the doomed airliner over and over again. True, his hearing was super-sensitive, but maybe if he pointed it out, a mortal pair of ears could pick up what he had heard there.

Schanke had approached, an annoyed look on his face. Nick had had a sound technician repeating the tape for him for more than an hour.

"Nick, that's enough," Schanke said, trying to sound like a boss instead of the friend he was. "We've got better things to do."

Nick ignored the admonition. "Schanke . . . Captain . . . Listen to this. . . . There's music in the background. It's tinny, like a music box or something." He looked at the technician. "Back it up one more time."

The technician replayed the tape, but Schanke wasn't listening. "Nick, the Feds have been all over this tape. It's a waste of time."

"But Schanke . . . "

"I said, enough, Nick. Look, I know we used to go off on tangents when we were partners, but I've got different priorities now, one being the taxpayers' money. I can't have this guy logging overtime on an issue that is out of our jurisdiction. Clear?"

Nick sighed and nodded. "Clear," he said, and was trying to think of a way to get his ex-partner to listen to him when Officer Miller stepped up and handed Schanke a gift-wrapped box of chocolates which he opened on the spot.

"It's from Commissioner Vachon," she said.

Vachon had been working at his computer while Nick concentrated on the tape. Something had motivated him to shave, but he had the kind of hair that didn't look combed even when it was, so he still had that 'street' look about him. He looked up when he heard his father's name mentioned. "My dad doesn't even like chocolates," he shrugged. "Says they act like germ collectors in the throat." He snorted, as if he found that idea totally ludicrous, but when Schanke offered him one, he waved him off.

"What? You don't like chocolate?" Schanke asked, as if that were a sacrilege.

"I like it," Vachon eyed the box suspiciously, "but you never know what you're going to get when you bite into one of those."

Schanke turned to walk away but stopped short. "What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked Vachon. "I thought you were off."

"I'm here on my own time."

Schanke looked at Vachon's computer screen. "What's this?"

Vachon stood up and slipped on his jacket. "A girl who was on the plane. Best we can do for an address is an abandoned church. Go figure. I guess it will have to do."

Schanke frowned at him. "You're not going there . . . "

"I'm just gonna swing by and say a prayer," Vachon winked at him.

Schanke was dead serious. "Take a back-up. . . . Nick, go with him."

"I'm off duty," Vachon reminded him, and, looking at Nick added, "and I don't need a baby-sitter."

Nick put up his hands to indicate that Vachon would get no argument from him.

Schanke was apparently not inclined to belabor the point, either. "Theresa Vaughn?" he read the name off of Vachon's screen.

\+ + +

Vachon pulled his bike to a stop in front of the address he'd found on the computer. It was definitely a church and it was definitely abandoned.

Or so he first thought. He found a side entrance that wasn't locked and immediately caught a whiff of freshly-burned candle wax. The light filtering in from the street illuminated an odd assortment of junk that seemed to be everywhere.

A little further inside, he found a steep staircase, and he actually saw candlelight flickering at the top of it. He climbed the stairs slowly, giving his eyes time to adjust to the dim light.

What he found at the top surprised him. In contrast to the dank, dusty and cluttered floor below, the area before him had been swept and scrubbed clean. Furniture-- _real_ furniture, not junk--had been meticulously arranged around thick rugs. Everything matched, so it looked like a display in a magazine add. Moonlight flooded in through the stained glass windows, although, he noticed with curiosity, all of them were fitted with shutters that would block out the light completely when they were closed. Why would anyone want to do that?

The hardwood floor had been oiled and polished to a luster that was a stark contrast to the dry, creaky planks on the lower floor. Looking down, he noticed a welcome mat at his feet. He thought the head of a staircase was a weird place to put one of those things, but since the floor's finish changed so abruptly at that spot, he gave his boots a cursory swipe across it before continuing.

There were a half dozen candles burning. Someone was here, or recently had been.

"Anyone here?" he called out. "Hey, Tracy, are you here?"

There was a movement directly above him. He looked up at what must have been some kind of loft or library stack, and saw a flash of blond hair, and a silhouette that told him it was a woman. For a moment he thought it was Tracy, but he didn't have a chance to get a good look at her before she vaulted the railing and jumped!! It had to have been 15 feet to the floor, but she landed upright and steady, and there was no thump, no thud, no sound at all, as if she had just floated to the ground. How had she done that?

He didn't get a chance to ask. The woman who had leapt in front of him wasn't Tracy. Her hair was curly, and she was shorter and more curvaceous. She was pretty though.

Or would have been if she wasn't looking at him like she wanted to castrate him.

She took a defiant step towards him. "Where is that BITCH!?" she spat.

He stepped back with his hands raised in surrender. "Hey, don't get me in the middle of a cat fight. . . . "

Bad move. That pissed her off. She grabbed the lapels of his leather jacket and demanded, "Where is she?!"

He moved his hands to hers and tried to make her let go, but she was unbelievably strong. He couldn't even budge her fingers, let alone pry them loose, and he really wanted to dislodge her. She was in the perfect position to knee him in the groin and there was nothing he could do to protect himself if she decided to do that-- and it looked like she might.

"Tell me where she is, before I kill you!!" she shouted.

She was just a tiny thing, but damned if she wasn't actually scaring him a little.

He shook his head, trying not to piss her off any more than she was.

She was backing him into the wall. He tried to stand his ground, but couldn't. She moved him easily. How could she be that strong? He was bigger than she was, and he was in good physical shape, but although he couldn't guess why, instinctively he knew she could wipe the floor with him if she decided to.

He tried reasoning with her. "I'm a police officer. Back off. . . . "

Wrong words.

She slammed him into the wall and forced the air completely out of his lungs. He attempted to take a deep breath to refill them, but she pounded him into the wall again. This time the back of his head connected with the plaster, and his vision faded for a moment.

When it cleared again, she was right in his face.

Only now, she was different.

Her eyes were glowing a bright, fiery yellow like no human eyes ever could, and her lips had pulled back to reveal the longest, most vicious-looking set of canines he'd ever seen.

< _No_ > he told himself. < _They aren't fangs_ >

< _Those aren't fangs_ > <They are _not_ fangs > <She does _not_ have _fangs_ >

They were fangs.

"One more time," she said, "where is Tracy?"

He shook his head as much as he was able to. "I don't know where she is."

"LIAR!" She slammed him against the wall again, so hard he thought her fists were going to go through his chest. She was inhumanly strong. She was . . . _inhuman_. . . .

He didn't care any more if she knew how scared he was. "Get away from me!"

He was fighting her now. No more Mr. Nice Guy. He really believed she could kill him, and he really believed she was going to, and he didn't know _what_ the hell she was.

She put that mouthful of horrible teeth so close to his face that he could feel her cold breath on his skin, and spoke to him as if he were a total imbecile--which at that point probably was not an entirely inaccurate assessment. "All you have to do is tell me where that whore is."

< _Okay, think about this. . . ._ > His heart was racing. He was terrified, now. He felt like he was two years old and had come face-to-face with the boogeyman. <It's a trick. People do _not_ have fangs. Their eyes do _not_ glow >

She was lifting him off the floor. < _No no no . . . this is NOT happening. . . ._ >

That petite little thing was dangling all sixty-eight kilos of him from her dainty little wrists like he weighed nothing at all.

And they were moving upwards. Going higher and higher, until he realized that her feet could not be on the floor, either.

This was no trick. This was some kind of alien or witchcraft thing . . . . Only it was _really happening to him_. . . .

He remembered his gun. He was able to slide his hand into his jacket, and almost wept with relief when his fingers closed around the grip. It was loaded, and he managed to slide the safety to "off" by touch alone.

He tried to look at the _thing_ in front of him, tried to sound calm. "Let me go, or I'll shoot."

She hissed at him, like a cat. Her mouth opened wide like she was going to . . . < _OhmyGod_ > bite him.

He pulled the trigger.

He heard the shot, and for a brief instant, she looked like she'd been punched in the stomach, but nothing else happened.

Except her eyes turned red.

Like two little windows into Hell.

He fired three more rounds into her. He would have fired more, except she threw him across the room.

He slammed into the opposite wall with his shoulder and head, and then dropped like a rock a good ten feet to the floor.

The blow stunned him, and the shock of it left him unable to move quickly. When he saw her coming for him again, he resigned himself to the fact that he was going to die, and he didn't even know what it was that was about to kill him.

Somewhere nearby, his dulled senses detected the sound of shattering glass, and he felt the night air rushing in from outside.

There were other sounds--screaming, hissing, women's voices shouting, wood splintering--but he couldn't comprehend all of it, no matter how hard he tried.

And then everything was silent, and Tracy was there, standing over him looking like the angels in the stained glass windows.

He tried to speak, but she hushed him and then carefully lifted him off the floor. All of him, cradled in her arms. Just like that, like he wasn't even half her size.

Her eyes were glowing, too. He hadn't been wrong about that. Whatever that thing that had just attacked him was, he knew that she was one, too. Only he wasn't afraid of her. Maybe he should have been, but he wasn't.

"I wish I could make you forget this, Javier," she said gently..

His ears were ringing and colored lights were flashing inside his skull. He knew he had a head injury, and maybe other injuries as well.

"I can't," he whispered. "I won't."

He was rapidly losing consciousness so maybe he just imagined that she kissed him, but he did feel her drawing him close to her in a secure, comforting embrace.

The last thing he was aware of was her cool lips against his cheek as she told him softly, "I know."


	6. Paint It Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick goes looking for Vachon, and has an unexpected encounter.

This time, they had been the targets.

The innocuous-looking box of candy that had been delivered to Schanke had not come from Commissioner Vachon, but from the psychopath who had blown up the plane. It had been rigged to detonate the moment a piece of candy was removed.

Luckily, Nick had been on the phone with Schanke when he'd heard the same tune he remembered from the cockpit voice recorder playing in the background. Just a split second from disaster, both he and Schanke had realized the dupe. By that time, however, it was too late to save the half dozen other precinct stations which Vudu, as the bomber had been nicknamed, had targeted.

Nick had literally flown to the station and convinced Schanke to allow him to dispose of the bomb in a dramatic moment that his mortal friend would likely never forget. Schanke had has his hand on a piece of candy, and had to keep it there because the wrong move would have triggered an explosion. Schanke was no coward. He didn't want to die, but he had accepted that one day he might do just that in the line of duty. It hadn't been easy for Nick to convince him to trade places. In the end, Nick had needed to apply a bit of 'vampire psychology' to the task, and it was a lucky thing that Schanke was one of the easiest whammies he'd ever met.

As soon as Schanke was at a safe distance, Nick had gotten as far from the building as his vampire abilities would allow before the bomb detonated, taking out an entire wall of Schanke's office and several surrounding windows, but thankfully sparing all of the 96th's personnel. Other precincts had not been so lucky. Twenty-three police department employees were dead, and dozens more were injured, some seriously.

The bombs had been made using a plastic explosive called Semtex, the same explosive used in the Edmonton court house bombing. Forty kilos of the stuff had been stolen from an Alberta mining company the previous July, and the batch number matched the batch which Vudu had used. He was daring them to find him, so confident that he hadn't even covered his tracks.

Nick had gotten rid of the reporters that had descended on the station for the time being, but then got the word that no one had seen his new partner since a few minutes before the blast.

No human remains had been found in the debris, and Nick was sure the commissioner's son had had time to get a safe distance from the building, but where was he?

Schanke must have been reading his mind. "Have you heard from Vachon?" he asked him.

"No. No I haven't. I haven't seen him since he went off looking for that girl. What was her name?"

"Theresa Vaughn. Lives at a church or something. Ring a bell?"

Nick shook his head.

This was not good. Aside from the fact that Vachon was 'connected,' Metro PD detectives didn't normally just disappear.

Schanke flagged Officer Miller down. "See if you can find Detective Vachon," he told her. "Try his old pals in vice, first, and then try his apartment. Oh, and don't call his parents."

She nodded that she understood.

She was back in minutes.

"Did you find him?" Schanke asked.

"I tried everywhere but his parents'," Miller explained, adding uncertainly, "and then I took the liberty of trying them, too. No one knows where he is. No one has seen him since he left here last night."

Nick grabbed his coat, irritated with Vachon. He had important things to do, and playing nanny to an irresponsible spoiled brat wasn't in his job description.

\+ + + + +

Screed was Screed. There was no way to ever change that, and Tracy Vetter knew it. He lived in the maintenance tunnels that criss-crossed the city's infrastructure, but he would have been just as happy in a sewer. Maybe even happier. There were more _rats_ in the sewers, and he subsisted on their blood instead of on humans like any decent vampire.

He could be the most slimy, disgusting creature on the face of the earth, but he was loyal to his friends, and it was an added plus that he harbored a fantasy that at some remote point on the space-time continuum, Tracy might find him attractive in some way she didn't even dare contemplate. He adored her. He would do anything for her, even if he wanted her to think he wouldn't.

"It's no' a screamin' problem, lady-love," he lectured in his distinct Cockney accent, flattered to have been asked his opinion. "Ya jus' do wha' needs to be done. Ya look 'im in the babyshoots an' then give 'im the bloody fang-bang." He picked up a squealing rat and brought it with him to where Vachon was stretched out on a mattress on the floor. "Ya boozle the laddie."

Vachon had been drifting in and out of consciousness, but his level of awareness had steadily increased each time he was awake, and he would be fully alert soon. Tracy had pulled his jacket and shirt off to check him for injuries, but other than one shoulder being scraped and bruised, nothing seemed to be broken or seriously damaged.

She took his hands and held them in hers for a moment. He had amazing hands, perfectly shaped, with long, graceful fingers. She could feel callouses on the fingertips of his left hand, and another on his right thumb. He played the guitar. She smiled at that. He did look more like a rock musician than a cop.

He was a bit feverish, but his vital signs were stable. She sat cross-legged on the mattress beside him. After moistening a clean washcloth with bottled water, she sponged him off with it, gently pushing his soft, dark hair back from his forehead.

Screed looked on, envious of the attention she was giving the mortal.

He altered his tone to reflect his indignation.

"Ya do him," he insisted. "Ya don't bring 'im over 'ere for me to 'ave ta look at 'is ugly puss. 'tis a major . . . . what's the word?"

"Imposition?" Tracy offered.

"Yeah, that. Ya do the deed, lady-fair. Ya wax him."

Tracy looked down at Vachon, and gently traced her finger across one of his closed eyelids. He had the longest, most perfect eyelashes she had ever seen. "I couldn't."

Screed bit down on the rat and drained it, making nauseating slurping noises that she was sure were for her benefit.

"Bet ya let 'im 'ave a little sample o' the goods, though, di'n't ya? Make's a bloke wonder jus' 'ow stiff is the competition, if ya get my drift."

He winked at her and put a hand on her back, and almost immediately knew he had overstepped his bounds.

She glared at him. "If you want to keep that hand, get it _off_ of me _right now._ "

He removed his hand and smiled apologetically, then knelt beside Vachon. He examined his neck for fang marks. "No' even a lil taste?" he remarked when he found none. Vachon drowsily batted his hand away. "Want me ta finish 'im? No' ol' Screed's usual queasy-zeen, but . . . "

Tracy grabbed him by his grimy shirt and flew him straight into a wall. He was a half a foot shorter than she was, so his feet dangled off the ground when she pinned him there.

He smiled sheepishly. "Ice it, Princess V. I'm behind ya."

She let him go. He rubbed his neck theatrically "Oooo, whiplash," he groaned. "Just gimme a reason, Missy T. Why 'ere in my doe-me-cile an no' the church?"

"Because _Urs_ has shown up, just like I said she would."

Screed begin to shake his head and wave his hands like he was dusting a table. "No no no! No thank you very much. Ya expec' me ta save yer Barbie-doll arse from that she-witch? I don' think so. I'm outa here, milady. . . . did I jus' call you milady? I don't even know you. Never seen ya, never even 'eard of you." He headed for the vent that was his exit. "When I ge' back 'ere, Romeo there 'ad better be dust!" He pointed to Vachon and then scoffed. " _Urs,_ she says, like i' was 'er Aunt Judy or something!"

The commotion had awakened Vachon. He was trying to sit up.

She went to him and pushed his shoulders back down. "Lie down," she told him. "You have a concussion."

He struggled against her outstretched palms. "Let me go!"

"If you get up, you are going to fall flat on your face. Keep still."

He struggled harder. Disoriented and confused, he was becoming combative. She would have to restrain him before he hurt himself.

She stretched out full length on top of him and pinned him down with his hands above his head and a firm grip on his wrists. He couldn't move anything but his head..

He looked up directly at her--there was nowhere else he could look-- and she saw a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

He had fantastic eyes--large, expressive, and so dark they were almost black.

"Let me go," he demanded.

"Only if you promise to lie still."

He raised his head defiantly and she could feel him making a futile attempt to buck her off.

She put her head temptingly close to his neck. "I'm only asking you to lie still. Can you do that?"

He tried to wiggle out from under her again. He was furious now, his male pride no doubt wounded. "LET ME GO!" he shouted.

She put her face nose-to-nose with his. "Lie still _and_ be quiet, and I'll let you go."

He resisted a few seconds more, but finally, he acquiesced. He had no choice.

She released him and then put the bottle of water to his lips.

He turned his head away, so she grabbed his face and squirted a few drops into his mouth. Once he'd actually swallowed it, he realized how thirsty he was, and took the bottle from her. He drank his fill and then tried to sit up again.

He made it halfway and then fell back. "I need to get out of here," he told her, but then frowned and said "Where am I?"

"Someplace safe," she told him. "You're hurt, but not bad."

He seemed to be remembering something.

"She was going to bite me. . . . "

"But she didn't. I didn't let her. And if it matters, she was probably just trying to scare you." She tenderly massaged his bruised shoulder, which looked like it had to be sore. "Sometimes we forget how fragile you are."

He snorted. "I am _not_ fragile."

"No . . . " she said. "Just human."

His eyes darted back and forth ever so slightly when he looked at her and she could tell he wasn't ready to get into that territory just yet.

He frowned again and asked, "Who was she?"

\+ + + + +

Nick had gone to the address taken from Vachon's computer. It was a church, just like Schanke had said. It looked abandoned, but as soon as he stepped inside, his stomach lurched.

Someone lived here, and he sensed the presence of another vampire.

He explored cautiously, finally making his way up a flight of stairs where he found what was apparently the vampire's living quarters. The place had been demolished and a window had been broken, and the intensity of the destruction told him that two of his kind had fought there. At least one of them was still alive, and nearby. He felt it.

A chill went through him. If Vachon had happened upon a nest of vampires. . . .

But the young mortal's blood had not been spilled there. He would have known if it had been.

"Come on out," he said. "I know you're here." The other vampire could no doubt sense him, too.

"I can't," an annoyed, muffled, female voice replied.

It came from behind a door, one that any vampire could have easily ripped off its hinges.

He lit a candle to investigate and found that the door closed off a shallow closet built into a niche in the thick stone walls of the church, and it was not just closed.

Two planks from the scattered debris had been laid atop one another at right angles, forming a cross on the floor in front of it. A large sliver of wood had been driven through both, probably just by sheer force of being thrown down at great speed, joining the cross together and nailing it down.

That trick wouldn't have worked on every vampire, but it obviously had proven quite effective against this one.

He was not overly fond of religious objects himself, so he had to find something to pry the cross apart with so he wouldn't get burned by it. He could argue endlessly with himself that the response was purely psychosomatic, but that wouldn't make it hurt any less.

He stripped the molding from one side of the door and used it as a lever to disassemble the cross.

The closet door opened and he could see that the vampire had been making a concentrated effort to dig and push through the stone walls. Eventually she would have gotten out.

She was a mess. Her hair was disheveled, her clothing ripped and bloodied. She stood staring at her fingernails which she had worn down to the quick, probably several times judging from the progress she had made towards freeing herself. Remnants of pink nail polish were evident near the base of each nail, but the rest of her manicure was history.

"I will _destroy_ that SLUT," she hissed.

Never one to fully understand conflict between females, Nick thought it best to avoid the issue for now.

"Who are you?" he asked.


	7. One Moment in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tracy and Urs tell their stories.

"My name is Urs . . . Ursula," the vampire with Nick began. "The last name have now is one I chose myself, because my mortal surname one was chosen for me. I didn't have one of my own. I was born in France in 1608 and left on the steps of a convent when I was a few hours old. I was raised by nuns who were convinced my mother was a whore," she shrugged. "Who knows, maybe she was.

"I was indentured as a maidservant when I was 12, and from then on, I was on my own. But I had learned to read, at a time when most _men_ were illiterate, and I learned everything I could. I knew there was a whole different world out there--the people I worked for _lived_ in it. I wanted to know everything there was to know about it, even if I couldn't have that for myself. I learned to behave like a fine lady, even though I wasn't. . . . "

She fluffed out her curls as if trying to show Nick she could be attractive. She needn't have done that--he found her charming and quite beautiful.

"Eventually, I attracted the attention of a young Englishman named John Grey. He was from a prominent family and had a successful business in Paris, and he didn't know about my background. Frankly, he never asked, but I just let him assume that I was what I appeared to be. Maybe I was wrong to do that. . . . "

\+ + + + +

"John had lived in France most of his life. I had known him since I was a young girl, and everyone had taken it for granted that he and I would be married one day," Tracy was telling Vachon. "Including me. We were of similar breeding, similar social station. Those things were important in the 17th century. . . . "

Vachon thought about his ex-girlfriend, who had ditched him for a guy twice her age, who had a six-figure paycheck and a condo in Florida. "Sometimes they still are," he snorted.

Tracy looked annoyed that he'd interrupted her, but continued, "Back then, a woman was judged by the man she married. It was as simple as that. The fact that I was to be John's wife was as much a matter of pride as it was love. You can imagine my humiliation when I found out he was seeing someone else. He didn't even bother to tell me. He let me find out from my maid, who'd heard it from his maid . . . . I mean, it was outrageously callous of him to begin with, but when I found out _who_ the woman was, well . . . "

\+ + + + +

"She had him followed," Urs went on, "and then she had me followed. She found out who I was, where I lived, who I worked for. John had proposed to me by this time. I was certain he loved me, that who I was wouldn't matter, but still, I hadn't told him the truth."

"He told Tracy- -her name was Teresa then--about our engagement. She was angry at first, but after a short time, she seemed to accept that John would be marrying someone else. Later, to show what a good sport she was, she announced that she would give a dinner party in his honor, so that she could meet me and introduce me to her circle of friends.

"Like a fool, I went with him. I don't know what I was thinking, how I could have possibly hoped to have pulled off my act in front of the upper class. . . ."

\+ + + + +

"Not only did I invite her," Tracy laughed mischievously, "I made sure I invited the family she _worked_ for. You should have seen the looks on everyone's faces when John walked in with a maidservant on his arm!" she giggled.

Vachon frowned. "That was mean."

Tracy looked mildly surprised. "It was the 17th century. Things were different then."

Vachon shrugged.

"Anyway, it backfired. John was humiliated, and it was only a few hours later that he found out I was behind the whole thing. He sent word that he never wanted to hear from me or see me again."

\+ + + + +

"It turned out I was wrong about him," Urs sighed. "He _did_ care, and the way he found out about me caused him so much embarrassment that he returned to England. My employers fired me and I was turned out on the street. I had no money, no references, and nowhere to go. The only options I had were to become a whore or kill myself."

Nick couldn't argue that. He'd lived in those times. He knew what she was saying was true.

"I went to the river. I intended to throw myself in, but as I stood there, I started thinking, 'If I do this, she will have won. Even if she didn't have John, she would have finished me.' I was not about to let her have that satisfaction."

\+ + + + +

"I had left the house to take a walk. It wasn't proper for a young girl to do that in those days, but I didn't care. I needed to be alone, to clear my head. I felt guilty for what I had done to John, but I was angry, too, Angry that _I_ had been cast aside in favor of someone whose purpose in life was to empty _chamber pots_."

Vachon wasn't sure what a chamber pot was, but he didn't think then was a good time to ask. He'd look it up in the dictionary later. . . .

\+ + + + +

"Then I saw her," Urs said, old anger rising in her voice. "Walking along the river bank, all alone, just asking for the thrashing I wanted to give her."

\+ + + + +

"She came at me like a banshee," Tracy said. "She started slapping me, and tearing at my hair. I fought back. I didn't care if ladies of refinement didn't do such things. That bitch had ruined my life, and I wanted to claw her eyes out."

\+ + + + +

"I didn't push her into the water," Urs said defensively. "She will tell you I did, but she fell. I even tried to pull her out. . . . "

\+ + + + +

"After she pushed me in, she actually tried to hold my head under the water!" Tracy spat. "I grabbed onto her arm, and we both ended up in the river."

\+ + + + +

"It was January, and the water was freezing," Urs shivered at the memory, "and the weight of our clothing dragged us down. Women were a lot of clothing back then. . . . You remember. . . ."

Nick nodded, recalling the heavy velvet gowns worn over numerous petticoats that had been the fashion then.

Urs continued, "We couldn't swim dressed like that, and we were being forced further away from the shore. I knew we were going to drown. There was nothing, no one to save us. I began to say the Act of Contrition in my head . . . ' _Oh my God, I am heartily sorry, for having offended thee . . ._ '" She laughed softly. "The nuns had taught me well."

\+ + + + +

"I remember the cold and the darkness closing in on me, trying to hold my breath because I knew if I inhaled it would be the last time. Finally, I couldn't hold out any longer. The water filled my nose, my mouth . . . except what I didn't know then is that when a mortal drowns in cold water . . . " she touched her neck "the trachea often closes off. It's called a dive reflex or something. Anyway, the water didn't go into my lungs, so I didn't really drown. I was unconscious and underwater though, which was not good. . . . "

\+ + + + +

"He pulled us out, both of us. Our master. There was barely any life left in either of us," Urs said softly, "but he knew there was still a spark. He knew there was just enough. . . . "

"He brought you _both_ across?"

\+ + + + +

Vachon was incredulous, but he asked, "What was that like?"

Tracy looked at him with those wonderful blue eyes and said, "It was the most erotic thing I have ever experienced."

Vachon wasn't expecting her to say that, and was mildly embarrassed by it. He didn't know what to say, so he muttered. "Oh."

"It was as if he were flowing into me. . . . " she continued. "It was everything."

\+ + + + +

There was sadness in Urs's voice as she finished the story. "He taught us the ways of the night, and when the sun came up, he just stood there, waiting for it."

"He destroyed himself?!" Nick asked.

Urs nodded. "Yes. We never knew who he was, or why he made us. We never got the chance to know him, really. I felt like I'd been abandoned all over again."

\+ + + + +

"He didn't leave us near any shelter, and we knew we had to get out of the light, so we buried ourselves in the earth." Tracy made a face that let Vachon know how thoroughly disgusting she had found the experience. "That night, I was the first to rise. She was still buried in the soil." She inspected her fingernails as if trying to appear nonchalant about what she said next. "The first thing I did . . . . well, the _second_ thing actually . . . " The way she looked at him let him know that the _first_ thing she had done was kill someone and drink their blood. He didn't really want any more details than that, and was relieved when she continued without offering any. "I ran to the church. I beat on the door of the rectory until a priest came out, and I told him where to find her and what she was."

She couldn't tell from the look on Vachon's face what he thought about this.

"You gotta understand," she told him. "This was the 17th century. People believed in vampires then."

"So what did they do when they found them?"

"Burned them, usually. Or cut off their heads. Or staked them. Sometimes all of the above."

Vachon frowned at her. "First you set her up to embarrass her, and ruin her chance to be happy, and _then_ you were going to let them _burn_ her _alive_?"

Tracy disregarded the first part of his observation entirely, and tried to sound casual about the second part. "Well, you don't really need a fire for us. Just leaving her out in the sun would have done it."

Vachon glared at her.

"Well it's not like they actually found her or anything. She got away."

He was still glaring at her.

"What?" Tracy said finally. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because," Vachon leveled his dark eyes at her and blinked. "I don't think I like you anymore."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thank my 16-year-old daughter for coming up with Urs and Tracy's backstory. Obviously, the one for Vachon and the Inca from the original script wouldn't work. Girls just don't fight about the same things boys do.


	8. Running on Empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick finds out his new partner knows a lot more than he should.

Nick went looking for LaCroix, who knew at least a little something about every vampire in Toronto. Urs didn't know where Tracy Vetter had taken Vachon, or even how she knew him, but it was Tracy who made her home at the church. Tracy Vetter and Theresa Vaughn were the same person, and when Vachon had gone looking for Theresa, he'd found a vampire. If he wasn't already dead, he soon could be.

He found LaCroix at the Raven, talking with Janette, who was not really listening to him. Here attention was focused on the stage, and the live performers dancing there. Nick did a double take when he realized they were male strippers.

"Janette thought the female clientele were deserving of equal time," LaCroix explained as he sipped a glass of the Raven special.

Nick didn't have time to comment on that. He needed information from LaCroix.

"Tracy Vetter," he said, knowing LaCroix would understand it was a question.

LaCroix smirked. "Who's the morose frontman for a pretentiously whiny rock band from Seattle?? Famous Vedders for 400, please, Alex."

Nick scowled openly. "That's Eddie and this is Vet-ter," he emphasized the T's.

LaCroix sighed. "Where is your sense of humor, Nicholas?"

"I don't have one. Do you know her or not?"

"I believe so," LaCroix sipped some more. "Young. Blond. Irresistible." He gestured to one of the men on stage. "He knows her quite well."

"Who is he?"

LaCroix looked at the man and raised an eyebrow as he stripped down to the very last, very tiny article of clothing he was wearing, a black leather g-string. "A wannabe Adonis who calls himself The Inca. Tracy is his master."

Nick had Janette signal to the performers that it was time to end the show, and he nabbed the Inca as he left the stage. The towel around his neck was the only thing he wore besides the g-string that left very little to the imagination. He was tall, with lean, well- defined muscles, the appearance of which was enhanced by what looked like sweat. Nick knew it was probably baby oil or something similar. Physical exertion rarely made any of them sweat, and when they did, it was red from the blood in it, not clear.

He eyed the young vampire disapprovingly. He had dark eyes and pin-straight, jet-black hair down to his shoulder blades, and his skin was the same shade as a moderately-tanned Caucasian, indicating he had probably been dark or olive-skinned as a mortal. He quite possibly really was an Inca. "Aren't you cold?" Nick asked derisively.

The Inca looked only mildly self-conscious and shrugged. "The money is good."

Nick got to the point. "I want to know about Tracy Vetter."

"She is not here anymore. She left."

"She was on the plane that crashed."

His features hardly moved, but suddenly the other vampire looked so stricken that Nick hurried to continue, "She survived. That's the good news."

The Inca closed his eyes and let out an audible sigh of relief.

Nick went on, "The bad news is, she might have a friend of mine with her, and if anything happens to him, she's going to have to answer to me. I need to find her."

The Inca nodded. "I think I know where she might be. . . ."

\+ + + + +

Screed returned to his underground residence and called to his guest. "You 'ere, Lady V? Did ya do the young constable in? Go' me a place you can rest 'is poor dead bums, if ya need it." He held up one of the two metal boxes he'd found in the tunnels. He'd sold the other at a swap meet and had kept one for himself. He had no idea what was inside, nor did he care, but the box itself would come in handy. It would keep a rat nice and comfy for a few hours if he poked some holes in it. What did the mortals call it? Brown-bagging it? He could take his meals with him. . . .

He realized he'd gotten no answer. "Tracy?"

He heard a muffled sound around a bend in the tunnel, and walking towards it came upon the sight of Tracy Vetter being held against the concrete wall by another vampire whose hand was around her throat.

"Oh, fine," he sighed. "Let's all 'ave a party down 'ere while we're a' it. I finally get the place se' up for a li'l peace an' quiet . . . "

"Shut up!" Nick Knight snapped at him.

Screed took that advice only halfway. "Make yourself a' 'ome, mate. Mi casa, su casa." To emphasize his displeasure, he punctuated the sentence with a raspberry.

Tracy was having trouble talking, probably trouble breathing too. "Does it make you feel like a big man to bully a woman?" she gasped at her captor.

"Save the feminist rhetoric for someone who cares," Nick shot back, pinning her more firmly to the wall. "What did you do with him?"

"I told him everything I knew about the crash," Tracy panted, "and then I let him go."

"Does he know what you are?" Nick said accusingly.

"I told ya t' ring 'im," Screed interjected.

Nick gave him an angry look. "I thought I told you to shut up?"

Screed never knew when it was wise to remain silent. "Are you an enforcer?" he asked.

Nick did not need the carouche's crap. He let his eyes turn gold to let the scrawny rat-sucker know how mad he was.

Screed backed off. "I'm sorry . . . go on. . . . "

"He's a resister," Tracy tried to explain. "He only knows about Screed here . . . and me."

Nick let her go, but continued to stand directly in front of her. The younger vampire didn't dare move. There were certain transgressions vampires instinctively did not commit, and intentionally pissing off older vampires was one of them.

" _And_ Urs," he added. "He's your responsibility now. The rest of our kind will kill him if they find out. Your dealings with Urs are none of my concern, but what you do with Vachon is my business. The only reason you are alive right now is because you let him go. Remember that."

\+ + + + +

Vachon went directly to his desk. He didn't want to talk to anybody.

It hadn't escaped his notice that the station had been blown to hell when he wasn't there, and he knew that questions were going to be asked, but right then, he just couldn't handle them.

Unfortunately, Captain Schanke had spotted him the instant he'd walked in. He leaned in close enough that Vachon could smell the souvlaki on his breath.

"Detective Vachon, would you care to explain where the hell you've been? I came this close to putting out an APB on you!" He held his thumb and index finger a centimeter apart.

"I can't tell you."

Schanke didn't like that answer. "You can't _tell_ me?"

"I was . . . with a source." That was not entirely untrue.

"Look around, pal. Does this look like a newspaper to you?"

Vachon sighed. "Okay an _informant_."

He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk.

Schanke's eyes became two little black pin-holes as he stared at him. "Are we comfy?" he asked sarcastically.

Vachon let his feet drop back onto the floor and sat up straight. He didn't want to play this game, but at the same time, he didn't really know how much trouble Schanke could make for him.

"You better call your father," Schanke said. "I think he's worried."

Vachon dropped his head into his hands as a round of snickers filtered through the room. "Do you want to know what I found out?"

Schanke was suddenly attentive, so Vachon continued. "A woman in the cockpit crew . . . a pilot, not a flight attendant . . . carried a gift-wrapped box through security. No one checked it."

"Your informant saw this?"

"Yeah. She was at the airport. She saw the woman board the plane. . . . The co-pilot's name was Karen Tomlinson. I checked. It has to have been her."

"That's it?" Schanke asked.

Vachon was irritated by his tone. "That's not enough? What more do you want?" He slumped down in his chair, realizing he'd spoken out of turn. "Sorry Captain. I'm just a little . . . mind if I just sit here for a few minutes?"

Schanke clapped him on the shoulder. "No. Go ahead. You did good." He started to walk away and then turned back and said, "Call home, okay?"

Natalie Lambert walked past Vachon's desk as he was washing down two aspirins with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

"Vachon? Are you okay?" she asked.

< _Well, let's see, since starting this job, I've seen a couple of hundred people blown to shreds and every bone in my body hurts because I got the shit knocked out of me by a girl and I met the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen and I thought she was dead and then I found out she was alive because she is a vampire and oh by the way vampires are real and not only are they real Toronto is apparently crawling with them and then I found out that not only was the gorgeous woman a vampire but she has a past history as a world class bitch and my father just has to be the ha-ha-everybody-have-a- good-laugh-on-JD police commissioner and did I mention that VAMPIRES are REAL? and I have a headache and I think I'm going to puke even though I haven't eaten in three days but other than that . . ._ >

"I'm fine," he grunted.

He pushed himself away from the desk and left, passing Nick on the way out without so much as a nod in the way of a greeting.

Nick joined Natalie and told her what he'd found out about Vachon and Tracy Vetter.

"You think he's attracted to her?" Natalie asked.

"I've seen her. I don't see how he wouldn't be."

Natalie smacked him on the arm and Nick realized his faux pax. "I just meant . . . uh . . . yeah, I'd definitely say she has him under her spell."

"Trouble," Natalie commented.

"Oh yeah," Nick nodded. "Definitely."


	9. Bridge Over Troubled Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vachon has some insights into Vudu's motives.

They had questioned friends and relatives of the ill-fated jetliner's pilot, but had not been able to link her with anyone in the city except for a vaguely described acquaintance named Jerry. Karen Tomlinson had mentioned him to her sister, but her sister didn't actually know the guy, or anything about him.

Nick and Vachon watched through a one-way mirror as Schanke interrogated her.

"Great-looking guy, terrific in bed. Not exactly something you can put on a poster," Nick said to Vachon, then turned to him and asked, "Did your informant see her with anyone at the airport?"

Vachon shrugged. "I think I got just about all I can get from her."

Nick nodded. "Some relationships just aren't meant to be."

Vachon glared at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Nick tried to correct his blunder. "Nothing, just that . . . you know, some informants don't work out."

For whatever reason, this irritated Vachon even more. "Well, don't lose any sleep over it, okay, Knight?"

He stormed off in the direction of the briefing room, where the night shift task force investigating the crash was scheduled to meet.

"All we can do is publish Karen Tomlinson's picture and hope someone saw her with this Jerry guy last week," Schanke said to the officers gathered at the briefing.

"He might not even be in the city," Officer Miller offered.

"He's here," Vachon muttered. "He's setting up his third bombing. And if the pattern holds true, it will have something to do with the police."

Schanke and Nick exchanged glances. "We threw out the three-bomb pattern while you were 'away,' Vachon."

Vachon frowned. "Why?"

"Because there were four bombings in Edmonton," Miller explained.

"But you're assuming Vudu worked with Dollard on the courthouse bombing. There's no evidence for that," Vachon said.

"Other than he blew Dollard up on the plane," Nick explained.

"Did anyone think to ask why?" Vachon looked around the room. "It wasn't that he wanted to keep Dollard's mouth shut because they had worked together. Dollard was making a one-time political statement, but Vudu is a serial bomber. His mind works differently. His reasons are more obsessive-compulsive than based on any obscure ideology or political agenda. What if he went after Dollard because Dollard upset his pattern?" Vachon pointed to his own head. "The pattern that his obsessed mind needed in order to make it work for him?"

Nick and Schanke exchanged glances again, this time both frankly surprised at Vachon's insight.

"You're saying he blew up the plane because he was pissed off at Dollard for interfering with his master plan?" Nick asked, his tone of voice indicating that the idea made sense to him.

"Psychos like Vudu have done stranger things," Vachon shrugged.

Schanke was listening, too. "Dollard screwed up his magic three, so he killed him."

Vachon continued, "His pattern in Seattle and Montreal were three bombings in a week, each one bigger than the one before. It would have been the same in Edmonton except the courthouse bombing--which Dollard was responsible for--upset the pattern."

Schanke nodded. "You might have something . . . . What about Toronto? First one bomb on the plane, then ten bombs sent out to police stations . . . How much bigger can he go?"

Nick looked at the Captain, knowing that Schanke knew what he was thinking even before he said it. "It's been five days since the plane went down. If Vachon is right, we have 48 hours to find out what he has planned next and stop him."

\+ + + + +

Vachon sat alone in the coffee shop toying with the first serious meal he'd had in days. He thought about Tracy Vetter. What was _she_ having for 'breakfast'? Some junkie? Some homeless family? Some poor schmuck who was going to kiss his wife good-bye, leave for work, and never be heard from again? She was a shark. A snake. A predator. She'd probably kill him, too, if she got the chance.

Why did he not care about that? Why, despite all of his good-Catholic-boy/cop/just-plain-human instincts to the contrary, did he still think she was the most wondrous and fascinatingly beautiful creature he had ever set eyes upon?

What did she think about him? Did she like him at all? And if she did, was it in the same way women usually did < _or didn't_ > like him? Or, were humans like pets to them?

Not that he would actually mind being her pet . . .

He shook that thought out of his head. < _You are whacked, JD. This is getting to you._ >

He heard a vaguely familiar voice somewhere close by, and looked around. It was Officer Miller, flirting with some guy who was giving her a line. Make that another line. He'd seen him there talking to her the day before, too, only then the line had been, 'Oh you work nights? Me too.' How dumb was that? Why else would they be eating breakfast at 9 PM?

It wasn't that Officer Miller wasn't attractive, in her own way, but there was something intimidating about the way she wore the uniform that would have made most men steer a path around her when she had it on. That was what made him think this guy wanted something from her other than casual conversation. Besides, he knew a line when he heard one. He'd used them all himself at least once. He just wondered what this guy's motivations were.

He had told Miller his name was Gary Reynolds. Vachon had made a note of that and intended to run a background check on him. No particular reason. He simply didn't like the guy's looks, or his attitude, or his ugly shirt.

Reynolds got up to leave. Miller continued to chat and giggle and wave at him until he was out the door, giving Vachon second thoughts about the background check. If Miller was interested in an asshole, it was none of his business.

He tossed the tip on the table and was pulling on his jacket when Miller saw him and smiled.

He waved and said 'hi' and then noticed the shopping bag on the seat where Reynolds had been sitting.

"Looks like your friend forgot something," he indicated the bag.

She peered over the table. "Oh . . . I guess he did." She grabbed the bag and pulled a business card out of the pocket of her uniform. "I have his number. I'll give him a call."

Vachon walked out into the night air and looked at the sky.

Could she fly? Could they all do that trick that he had seen Urs do, and float in the air like . . . angels?

Was he ever going to see her again?


	10. Eve of Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vachon makes an important connection.

Vachon was staring into his desk drawer. He'd forgotten why he'd opened it. Almost a week without any real sleep did funny things to your head.

The crash bothered him. It probably would until he buckled under and submitted to the mandatory counseling that department personnel were required to undergo after such an experience. But he hated the idea of 'sharing his pain' and intended to put that off as long as he could get away with it.

Besides, that was only part of what was troubling him. The other part, he couldn't tell anyone, unless he wanted to end up under some serious psychiatric care.

He was 25 years old, and he was afraid to sleep because of _vampires_.

How would _that_ sound to the department psychologist?

He couldn't tell anyone vampires were real. . . . . Well, he _could_ , _if_ he wanted a quick end to a short career . . . .

Every time he thought of Urs's fangs in his face, and the way her eyes had turned that fiery blood red, the hair on back of his neck stood on end and his skin crawled. And then, he would think of Tracy. Holding him in her arms like some kind of Super-Angel, speaking to him in that soft voice of hers, looking at him with those eyes like aquamarines--eyes that could turn yellow and glow. . . . .

Vampires.

He was afraid he'd see them again.

And, he was afraid he wouldn't. . . .

Miller and Natalie Lambert were talking about something. Normally, female conversations didn't interest him, but now it made him think about Tracy and Urs. Miller and Natalie seemed so _normal_ and safe by comparison.

"Whatever it is you're taking, I want some!" Natalie laughed.

Miller grinned broadly, "I met this guy. A really nice guy . . . who just happens to be extremely good-looking."

_Reynolds? Good-looking?_

Vachon snorted and slammed his desk shut. The two women turned around for an instant, but soon went back to their conversation.

"And he has a job?" Natalie asked.

"Underground engineer with the city, thank you very much," Miller laughed. "Nights, like me. And I'm to call him when I get off, so we can go out to breakfast." She showed Natalie the card she had shown Vachon earlier.

Why would an underground maintenance worker < _engineer, my ass_ > need business cards? Vachon was thinking. . . .

Nick came in, and Natalie turned her attention to him. "Anything new?" she asked.

Nick sat on Vachon's desk so he could talk to them both at the same time. "I'm trying to make sense of his psych reports. . . . Find a hook."

Vachon got his mind back on his job. "You're sure there's one to find?"

Nick nodded. "Vudu attacks institutions of authority. And, he's using women on the inside as carriers. In all of the bombings where there were witnesses . . . all reported seeing either a woman with a gift-wrapped package, or a man handing a woman one." He sighed. "Anyway, we've got less than 10 hours to see what he came up with this time."

"Knight! Vachon!" Schanke called from his office. He was already starting to sound like a captain.

He had them follow him to the forensics lab, where a technician had disassembled the contents of a metal ammo box and had them spread across a table.

"Some swap meet dealer bought it from a homeless guy who said he found it on a sewer pipe," the technician explained. "It's a bomb, and it's one of Vudu's. I'm sure of that. The detonators are a positive match, and it contains enough Semtex to level a city block."

"We've got him, then," Schanke said optimistically.

"Not so fast, Captain," the technician went on. "He has enough Semtex to make sixty of these things, and if he did. . . . "

"He could level the city," Vachon finished for him.

Schanke took a deep breath, and immediately began charting a plan of action. "All right . . . let's start by getting people off the streets--out of the subways, downtown apartment buildings, hotels, office buildings. We'll set up search teams. These things could be anywhere."

Nick relegated the task of initiating the evacuation of the downtown area to Vachon.

He remembered the carouche living in the maintenance tunnels. Most vampires made it a point to know their surroundings well. It kept them safe. The carouche probably knew what was under the city of Toronto better than the public works people did.

Nick arrived at Screed's lair to find that he already had a visitor-- Urs was there.

"I'm tellin' ya Ur-su-leena, I've no' seen yer blood-sis since she was 'ere w' tha' baby Sherlock. . . . "

Urs slammed him into the wall with her fist, just hard enough to let him know he'd better be telling her the truth.

Nick cleared his throat to get their attention, even though both of them had probably sensed his presence and knew he was there.

"Wha' is this?" Screed grumbled. "Di' somebody pu' my bloody address on the In'ernet?"

Nick spotted a metal ammo box on the floor. It was identical to the one the lab technician had shown him. He picked it up to take a closer look and Screed grabbed it away from him.

"'ands off!" the carouche said irritably.

"Do you know where more of these are?" Nick asked him.

"I'm no' tellin' you skut."

"You sold one."

Screed looked at Nick uncertainly. "So?"

"They're bombs," Nick said.

Screed's eyes widened for a moment, but then his nonchalant demeanor returned. "Yeah, an' I'm your Aunt Charly."

"With enough Semtex to blow up a city block," Nick told him sternly.

Screed was intimidated.. "Tha' would be the goo inside?"

"That would be the goo."

"But I saw more of these when I was looking for this place," Urs commented.

"We think they've been planted all over the city," Nick said.

"Oh no . . . " Urs gasped.

"An' these boomers'll do a ci'y block?" Screed asked.

"Yeah," Nick told him. "And we need to find as many as we can."

"Two bills a piece?" Screed said.

Urs slapped him on the back of the head. "You'll do it for _free_ or I'll make _you_ pay two bills apiece!"

Screed held up his hands in surrender. "Jus' a joke, yer ladyship. . . . no 'arm intended. "

Urs turned to Nick. "Where do we start?"

Vachon had alerted the proper agencies to get the evacuation underway and had gotten the search teams rolling under the city.

They faced a daunting task. There were literally miles of tunnels down there, and no one person knew where all of them were. He intended to join the search himself as soon as he could arrange for calls to be relayed to his cell phone--and after he made sure his cell phone worked. He'd accidentally run over it with his bike and now the battery fell out sometimes.

Miller was heading out to join the search, and she stopped by his desk to let him know. "I called my friend Gary. He works underground. I'm meeting him at St. Patrick's station so he can help with the search."

Vachon nodded, and she started to leave, but turned back. "Oops. Almost forgot he wanted me to bring this along." She grabbed the shopping bag Reynolds had left in the coffee shop.

Vachon waved to her absently as she left. He started rummaging through desks looking for something to hold the phone together and finally found some duct tape in Miller's top drawer. He wrapped it around the battery compartment of the phone and then studied his work. It would do.

As he was replacing the tape he spotted Gary Reynold's calling card on Miller's desk.

'Gary Reynolds, Substructure Delineation Administrator, City of Toronto.' What the hell did _that_ mean? What kind of total, pretentious jerk was this guy?

If Miller was lucky maybe he'd get his head blown off.

Miller!!!

What had Nick said? _'He's using women on the inside as carriers.'_??!

He knew he was possibly grasping at straws, but when he remembered the shopping bag, a wave of panic seized him. He took four flights of stairs two steps at a time trying to catch up with Miller before she could leave the station.

He got to the parking lot just as she was pulling out in a patrol unit. He looked around frantically. Every available unit was out on the streets. He'd have take his bike.

He ran back up the stairs for his jacket and keys and tried to call dispatch to get them to try and turn Miller around before she got to St. Patrick's. But the line was jammed with emergency traffic, and he couldn't wait for an opening.

Time was critical, but he ducked into the gear locker on his way out and grabbed a kevlar vest. He'd seen what Vudu's bombs did to people. Call him egotistical, but he wanted at least one nice, big identifiable chunk of him left if this one went up in his face.


	11. I'll Be There for You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vudu carries out his plan.
> 
> WARNING: Gun violence.

Vachon found Miller's patrol unit in front of the station and parked his bike alongside it.

He heard his phone as soon as he cut the engine off, and wondered how long it had been ringing.

It was Miller.

"I'm right behind you," he told her. "I'll be inside in a minute. . . . ."

"NO!" she said sharply. "Get away from here. The package Gary wanted me to bring . . . "

"It's a bomb, isn't it?" Vachon asked softly.

"Yes. I don't know how long before . . . "

Vachon could hear a music box playing in the background. Hadn't Nick said something about hearing music on the cockpit voice recording from the plane?

An icy feeling crept through him as he realized they were out of time. Miller was Vudu's carrier. He had lured her to this particular subway station so that he could strategically detonate the bomb she carried and thereby set off a chain reaction that would trigger the others.

With luck, the city crews had found some of them, but chances were, a lot of people were about to die.

"Detective Vachon?" Miller said softly, her voice just barely a whisper.

"Yeah?"

"He's here with me . . . Vudu."

Why the hell was he just _standing_ there!?

He knew the answer to that. He was afraid. He had found Vudu-- _really_ found him. And there was a bomb. A real, ticking bomb that was going to explode in minutes.

He didn't want to die.

Officer Miller probably didn't either. . . . .

That one thought got his feet moving as he dialed his partner's cell phone.

He told Knight where they were and that the detonator had been set. It wasn't like Nick could do anything about it, but if the bomb went off, at least someone would know that he and Miller had been at ground zero when it happened.

He made his way into the station as quietly as possible. Vudu probably didn't know that Miller had been talking to someone who was right outside the building.

When he came to the subway platform, he saw them both. Reynolds/Vudu had a gun on Miller. That was why she hadn't just made a run for it. He was making her listen as the music box wound down.

"The detonator is spring loaded," he was saying. "There's no way to disarm it. When the music stops . . . Boom!. . . . " He showed her a device that looked like a TV remote, but was probably some kind of FM transmitter. He explained how he'd used it to activate the detonator, explaining proudly, "It has a range of ten miles. I mean, it's some of my best work."

Vachon was at Reynolds' back, but he positioned himself so that Miller could see he was there.

Her eyes barely moved, but he knew she saw him. He opened his jacket to show her the kevlar vest beneath it, so that she'd know he had a far better chance of surviving than she did if Vudu discharged his weapon. He wanted her to try to escape if she got the chance, and not worry about him.

"So how many bombs are there?" Miller said calmly, distracting Vudu so he wouldn't look behind him. Vachon was trying to get into position to take Reynolds down without possibly hitting Miller or the bomb. He was a decent shot, but he wasn't a sharpshooter and he'd never had to fire at anything other than cardboard targets. The fact that his nerves were in overdrive did nothing to improve his aim.

He was forced to acknowledge that Miller's only chance was for him to divert Vudu's attention away from her. He aimed directly at Vudu's back.

"Metro Police! Drop your weapon!"

Vudu's reflexes were like lightning. Vachon had the fleeting thought that the guy must have had some kind of military or martial arts training an instant before Vudu's gun flashed.

A violent impact--he couldn't even tell where he'd been hit--spun him almost completely around and knocked him off his feet.

By some miracle, he managed to hang onto his gun and motivated by sheer instinct for self-preservation, he scrambled to his feet and squeezed off three poorly-aimed rounds that didn't hit anything

Miller ran for cover and managed to get around the corner of the building where Vudu couldn't reach her.. "He's got my gun!" she yelled at Vachon, letting him know she couldn't provide cover for him.

"Get out of here!" Vachon shouted. "Get as far away as you can!"

Vudu was aiming his weapon again.

Unfortunately, he _was_ a crack shot. Vachon felt three more slugs hit him in the mid-section, and he went down again. He didn't even know if he had bullets in his body or not. They said you didn't feel it at first. But he felt like he'd just been hit by a truck.

Vudu was walking towards him, and Vachon raised his weapon to defend himself.

Another flash from Vudu's gun was followed instantly by a sharp pain that traveled down his fingers into his wrist and elbow.

Vudu had shot his gun from his hand. His middle and index finger throbbed painfully and he wondered if they were still there, but he didn't dare take his eyes off of Vudu to look.

The bomber inched closer, a cold smile on his face. "You're hard to kill," he grinned, and then pointed his weapon at Vachon's torso again. "Wonderful thing, kevlar."

That shot was deliberately aimed right at the center of his chest. The impact alone knocked Vachon senseless and left him unable to breathe. He didn't know if the vest had stopped the bullet or if the bullet had stopped his heart. How long did it take you to die if your heart was shot out? Was it instantaneous, or did you have a few seconds left to think about it?

Vudu was going to fire again. . . . .

Except this time he was aiming at Vachon's head.

Vachon closed his eyes and hoped that for his mom's sake, the bullet wouldn't completely obliterate his face.

There was nothing else left to do.

He didn't hear the gun go off. There was no way Vudu had changed his mind. Had it been that easy? Did you not actually experience the exact moment that death happened? Had he already died, without knowing it?

"VACHON!" He heard Knight's voice in the distance and opened his eyes, but it wasn't Knight he saw first.

Tracy was there.

And she had Vudu.

Her teeth were in his neck and she was drinking his blood.

What could he do? Tell her to stop? She wouldn't. Somehow, he _knew_ she wouldn't.

The bomber looked directly at Vachon, his eyes filled with terror. He was dying, and he didn't even know why.

Vachon couldn't move. Couldn't do anything to save him. Didn't _want_ to do anything to save him. . . . .

Nick approached in time to watch as the life quickly faded from Vudu's eyes. They stayed open, but the pupils blew and they were just two dark, dead holes. They said eyes were the windows to the soul. If Vudu ever had a soul, it was gone now, and the windows opened onto an empty space.

When Tracy let him go, he saw her eyes, glowing red against her pale skin like two little embers on a bed of ash. There was blood on her mouth, on her lips. . . on the fangs she had. _Fangs_ , just like the other vampire. . .

Then, Tracy snapped Vudu's neck. He heard the spine crack.

She turned and looked right at him. The fangs were gone now, and she pulled something < _a tissue? a handkerchief?--his eyes didn't want to focus on anything but her bloody lips_ > out of her coat pocket and wiped the corners of her mouth.

He should have been afraid, but just like before, he wasn't.

He was struggling for each breath he took, but he managed to say her name.

She knelt beside him as Nick ran up to look at Vudu's body. Tracy took his hand in hers. It was so cold, but so soft . . . like velvet on a cold night.

There was a feathery, scraping sound and Vachon saw another pair of legs beside him. He looked up and saw it was Urs, but he simply couldn't muster whatever he needed to be afraid of her when she knelt beside him, too.

He could hear the music box winding down.

"The bomb . . . " he wheezed and tried to point in the general direction. "It'll go off when the music stops. . . . "

The two vampires looked at each other and then Urs stood up.

"Stay with him," she told Tracy. "I'll take care of it."

Knight was shouting an 'officer down' alert into his cell phone. < _That was about him, wasn't it?_ >

He nodded in Nick's direction. "He saw you," he told Tracy.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I can make him forget everything."

Vachon accepted that. He was going into shock, but he didn't fight it. Nick had already called for paramedics, and Tracy wasn't looking at him like it was the last time she'd see him alive. She would know if he was dying, wouldn't she?

"Tracy . . . "

"Shhhhh. . . . You're going to be okay."

He was cold, shaking. She took off her coat and covered him with it.

Off in the distance there was a muffled rumbling sound and the sky lit up for an instant.

Vachon tried to turn his head in the direction of the explosion. "Is she . . . ?"

Tracy stroked his hair. "No, she's fine. She just tossed it where it wouldn't hurt anyone. . . . " She looked over her shoulder and saw Miller running towards them, apparently having realized that the bomb had been safely disposed of. "I should get out of here. There will be too many questions."

He gripped her hand tighter. He didn't want her to go.

"I'll be at the hospital," she said, and wrinkled her nose in that funny little grin she had. "I bet I beat you there."

She casually stepped aside as Miller dropped down to the ground. The officer didn't say anything. She pulled off her jacket and tucked it under his feet.

Tracy walked over to Nick, who had apparently decided Vudu was really dead. They spoke to each other, but Vachon couldn't hear what she said to his partner, to make him forget what he'd seen.

And then, she was gone, and Nick was beside him. At first, his partner looked concerned, but when he checked and discovered Vachon was not actually bleeding from any place, he winked mischievously and said "Commendation."

Vachon laughed softly, even though it hurt. "I don't think it's too bad."

Nick shook his head. "No. You'll live." He reached into Vachon's jacket and poked his finger out through a bullet hole. "Nice souvenir, too."

Vachon looked at the hole.

Yeah. That _was_ pretty cool.


	12. Tender is the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything will be fine.

He had been scanned, x-rayed and forced to part with a couple of liters of various bodily fluids before it had been decided that-- beyond the fact that his chest and abdomen were one big, nasty bruise, and he was so sore that it required careful planning to sit up or even roll over--there wasn't really anything wrong with him. Thank God for Kevlar. They were going to release him the next day.

True to her word, Tracy had been there when the paramedics had wheeled him into the ER and she had stayed with him until friends and relatives had begun to gather. He had introduced her to Nick as a friend, to see if Nick really had been made to forget he'd seen her at the subway station. There wasn't even a hint that Nick recognized her. He'd have to ask Tracy how she'd done that.

He'd spent most of the day still running on adrenaline, assuring everyone he was okay and trying to avoid answering questions about Vudu. Everyone assumed he'd taken the bomber down, and he didn't know how to say that he hadn't without telling the true story, so he had tried to downplay it as a lucky shot. Considering the circumstances, it _would_ have taken luck for him to have killed Vudu.

He wondered why no one in the Coroner's office had noticed that the holes in Vudu's neck hadn't been made by bullets. Maybe it had just been assumed that they were--who would have dared call them 'vampire bites' anyway?

Even he had noticed that Vudu hadn't had much blood on him, though. With a gunshot wound in that area, he should have bled like a slaughtered pig. Still, no one at the Coroner's office had questioned that, either. He found that especially strange, but he knew he wouldn't say a word about it.

Vachon also had a problem with the fact that Nick hadn't immediately run to him instead of to Vudu when he had arrived on the scene. If _his_ partner had been gunned down, he wouldn't have wasted a second worrying about the condition of the perp.

He finally concluded that the shock of seeing Tracy . . . what she was doing . . . had caused Knight to have a temporary lapse of common sense. Seeing Urs the first time had done the same thing to him. It was understandable. If Knight had been made to forget how Vudu had died, his memory would have started with him kneeling at Vachon's side where he belonged. Vachon would have to let it go at that.

He had casually endured a constant stream of visitors all day long, because, all things considered, he didn't really feel that bad. He wasn't being given any really potent drugs, and the pain from his injuries was not bad enough to keep him from enjoying the attention.

Captain Schanke had stopped by to show him an evidence bag containing the five slugs that had been dug out of his kevlar vest. This had impressed the hell out of everyone but his mom, who had just stood there staring at the flattened metal fragments with a stunned look on her face until his dad had taken them from her hand. It was only then that he had realized-- _really_ realized--how close he had come to being killed. It had been a sobering experience.

At around 4 pm, his dad had ordered everyone out, but had stayed with him awhile longer, just the two of them. It had been one of those Major Bonding Moments. Vachon was going to get a commendation, just like Nick had said he would, but this time, being the Commissioner's son had nothing to do with the accomplishment. He'd earned it, and his dad had been quick to acknowledge that.

Well, he'd almost earned it. If Tracy hadn't shown up when she had, they'd be planning a funeral for the pieces they were able to find. A mass funeral, probably. Another one.

Vudu had taken out 25 cops, counting the two on the plane with Dollard, and over 200 innocent people. He had deserved what he'd gotten. The memory of watching him die was not going to bother Vachon, ever. Maybe it was wrong for him to think that way, but that was just how it was. . . .

His dad had left around 6, and he'd crashed big-time, the first real sleep he'd had 7 days. Even when he'd been awakened a couple of times by nurses checking his temperature and blood pressure, he'd gone right back to sleep.

He didn't even think about the vampires.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He _tried_ not to think of them, and he was so exhausted that it had worked, at least until he opened his eyes to find _her_ standing next to his bed.

Beautiful Tracy, looking more like an angel than she ever had.

At least, he thought it was her. He turned on the light over the headboard so he could see her clearly.

"Hi," she smiled. You couldn't even tell she had fangs. How did they do that? He'd have to ask her sometime.

He raised the bed to a sitting position. It was less painful than trying to sit up on his own.

"Brought you something." She handed him a bag that had grease spots on the outside, which meant it was something good. He looked inside. Hamburgers, fries and a chocolate milkshake. "I've heard the food in these places is awful."

He took the milkshake out and took a swallow. "Chocolate," he smiled. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess."

He attacked the food. For the first time in days, he was really hungry--starving, actually. It was 3 am, and they had served "supper" over 10 hours ago, when he'd still been too keyed up to eat much.

He offered to share, but wasn't surprised when she didn't take anything. Did they even eat real food? Ever? He'd have to ask her _that_ sometime, too.

She sat next to his bed, watching him eat, as if he were performing some kind of fascinating ritual. He didn't mind. He was glad she was there.

She took his right hand in both of hers. The first two fingers were purple and blue down to the second knuckle, and he'd probably lose the nails, but Vudu's shot had just missed taking them off his hand. The plastic ID band on his wrist had shifted so that the closure was on top of his arm, and she gently twisted it around so that it was back in its proper position.

There was an IV line running into a vein in his forearm. She touched it so gently he didn't feel it. "Does this hurt?" she frowned.

He looked into her wonderful, sympathetic blue eyes and thought about telling her that it did, but finally shook his head and said, "No."

She seemed happy to hear that, but also a bit embarrassed to have shown her concern. She busied herself with neatly arranging everything in the room while he finished eating.

He loved the way she moved. Graceful, almost like she was floating.

She took his leather jacket from where it was hanging with the rest of his clothes. There were three bullet holes in it altogether. She poked her finger through one just like Nick had done.

"You know, these can be fixed," she said.

He shrugged and smiled. "I dunno. I kind of like them."

She sighed and hung the jacket back up, then sat beside him again.

"I'm glad you weren't hurt," she told him, and he knew she meant it.

"How did you know?" he asked. "About Vudu and where to find me?"

Her eyes shifted just slightly. "Nick was near Screed's place when you called him. Screed overheard and then called me."

That wasn't the entire truth, and Vachon knew it, but he didn't question her. She had her secrets. He could respect that.

"And Urs?"

Tracy blinked uncomfortably. The fact was, Urs and Screed had been with Nick looking for the bombs when Vachon had called his partner. That was how they had known. But how could she tell Vachon that without telling him his partner was a vampire, too?

"She was following me," she lied to him again. "She just happened to be there."

He nodded and accepted that too.

"Is she still mad at you?"

Tracy shrugged, "We've settled our differences for now, but you never know with Urs. She and I started out as enemies, but after we were brought across, it didn't take us long to realize that very young vampires don't stand much of a chance on their own. They're too inexperienced to avoid hunters, and they are not able to defend themselves against older, stronger vampires who don't want their territory invaded," she explained. "We only had each other, like it or not." Tracy sighed and folded her arms. "She came here because of something that happened in 1912. We were friends, then. Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't. . . ." She gave him a look that was almost sad. "Neither one of us is the same person we were. I want you to know that."

He remembered telling her he didn't like her any more. God, he could be such a stupid jerk.

He nodded that he understood.

"What does she want?" he asked.

Tracy shook her head. "It's a long story."

Vachon looked at his surroundings, and pointed to the IV pole he was tethered to. "I'm not going anywhere."

Tracy slipped off her coat and leaned back in her chair, stretching her long, slender legs out in front of her. She'd gotten a new blouse, some kind of blue satiny material that matched her eyes, but she was wearing the jeans he'd given her.

He smiled at that. He wasn't sure why it made him feel good, but it did..

"Sometime around 1910, we were living in France again, Urs and I," Tracy began. "An English woman named Claire Gibson offered a huge sum of money to anyone who could procure a piece of art known as the Black Buddha. It was really a tacky thing, just a chunk of unpolished black marble about the size of a beer can, with all these gaudy gemstones set in it. I mean really, what would something like that go with?"

Vachon shrugged. He didn't even own matching dishes.

"Anyway, it supposedly had some kind of spell on it, and that was the real reason she wanted it. Urs and I knew where it was and who had it. We knew we could get it for her."

"You stole it?" Vachon asked suspiciously.

"No, of course not, although she would have paid us to do that, too. The arrangement was only that we locate it and buy it for her, which, as it turned out, was not as easy as it sounds." She crossed her legs in front of her. She'd gotten some new shoes, too. Black, ankle-high, lace-up boots that would not have been flattering on most women, but which looked perfect on her.

She proceeded to tell him the tale of how she and Urs had acquired the Buddha, and it sounded like the plot from an Indiana Jones movie. He got out of breath just listening to it.

"Claire paid us what she promised. Every penny. The magic spell of the Buddha was that it supposedly granted the owner one wish, and now it belonged to her." She pushed her hair back away from her face and sighed. "I don't know what Claire wished for, but it couldn't have been what she got."

Vachon had been watching her intently, the way her mouth moved, the way her eyes crinkled up at the corners when she laughed. How could any woman be that perfect?

"What happened to her?" he asked.

"She sailed to the States a couple of years later . . . on the _Titanic_."

Vachon's eyes widened. "No shit?"

Tracy smiled. "No shit. . . . Anyway, she had the Buddha with her. The ugly thing was worth almost a million dollars back then. Who knows what it would be worth now."

"Did she survive?"

Tracy shook her head..

"No. But the rumor was that the Buddha was saved. By one of us. . . a vampire. Urs recently learned that it's here, in Toronto, still in the possession of a vampire. Since I knew Claire, and since I live in Toronto, Urs naturally assumed that I was the one who had it."

Vachon cocked his head to one side. "Do you?"

"No. I have no idea where it is. Screed could be using it for a doorstop for all I know. I finally managed to convince Urs of that."

Vachon remembered something. "But the plane. You were leaving. . . ."

Tracy nodded. "Yes. It was easier than confronting her. You have to understand, Urs would not have just let this go. For one thing, she believes in the spell. She believes the Buddha has the power to grant her a wish."

"What is it she wants?"

Tracy shrugged. "What she has always wanted. Money. Status."

Vachon wasn't sure he should ask, but he had to know. "What about you?"

Tracy shook her head. "I don't know if I believe in the spell, and even if I did. . . Wealth, position . . . I've had those things. It didn't make me a better person. Urs can't understand that, though. She would not have given me a moment's peace as long as she thought I knew where that Buddha was. She'd be afraid I'd sell it and she feels she has a stake in it and deserves her share. It's just how she is."

"But she's changed her mind now?"

"Yes. That bomb deal kind of put things into perspective for her. Your lives. . . mortal lives . . . can end in an instant, yet you took that chance to save people you didn't even know, and she not only saw that, she was able to help you. That meant something to her." Tracy's expression was unreadable. He had no idea from what she had just said how she felt about Urs. She continued, "We live a very long time. There will be other Buddhas. She knows that."

"So you aren't leaving?" he asked hopefully.

"No." She took his hand again, and gently massaged the palm with her thumb "Somebody has to stay here and make sure nothing happens to you, Javier Vachon."

She leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips were so cold it was like an electric shock, but it was awesome and thrilling and wonderful.

Did they have sex? He'd have to ask her that, too. Well, maybe not right away, but eventually. . . .

She gathered the food wrappers and containers from the bed and pushed them into the trash can, and then lowered the bed so he was lying flat again. Her long, slender fingers reached over his head and turned the light out.

"Go back to sleep," she told him. "I'll stay here with you until the sun comes up."

Even though his subconscious mind was telling him he had to be crazy to even consider falling asleep in the same room with a supernatural creature he had not believed existed a week before, he closed his eyes and felt completely relaxed.

What was there to be afraid of? He had his very own guardian angel now. A golden-haired vampire named Tracy.

She wasn't going to let anything happen to him.


End file.
